Étincelles, Op. 36 No. 6

Moritz Moszkowski

Étincelles, Op. 36 No. 6 by Moritz Moszkowski: play it with falling notes in your browser, on your computer keys, a touch screen or a MIDI keyboard. It is part of Klaviero Premium, and 49 pieces are free. The chart has 2,914 notes over 2:30, peaks at 23.5 notes per second, and Klaviero rates it tier 5 of 5.

Étincelles, French for sparks, is the sixth of Moritz Moszkowski's 8 Characteristic Pieces, Op. 36. It is a showpiece in B flat major in 3/8 time that suggests flashing sparks with a staccato theme and very fast scale passages, while the dynamics stay quiet almost all the way through. A performance lasts about three minutes. Vladimir Horowitz played it often as an encore at his later concerts and wrote his own coda for it, and Moszkowski's short, brilliant pieces like this one are still used as encores. It is one of the 30 densest charts in the library: 2,914 notes in 2:30, an average of 19.4 notes per second, with the busiest 25 seconds, 0:33 to 0:58, at 23.5. The right hand plays 68% of the notes. Playing that fast and that quietly at once is the whole difficulty. The range runs from B flat0 to G7, and 21 notes fall outside a 61-key keyboard.

Moszkowski's Sparks, Op. 36 No. 6, an encore Vladimir Horowitz played often.

It averages 19.4 notes per second against a peak of 23.5, so the busiest bar is barely harder than the rest and there is nowhere to recover. The right hand carries 68% of the 2,914 notes, so the left mostly holds shape while the right does the work. The notes run B flat0 to G7, 6.8 octaves, which is past what a 61-key board reaches at one end or the other. Klaviero rates it tier 5 of 5.

Composer
Moritz Moszkowski
Notes
2,914
Length
2:30
Peak density
23.5 notes per second
Difficulty
tier 5 of 5
Access
Premium
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